Final Four features best teams, not one-and-dones
GLENDALE, Ariz. - It’s quiet here at the Final Four, with no LaVar Ball around to stir things up.
He has no reason to be, not with without his son, Lonzo, and UCLA here. There’s no De’Aaron Fox or Malik Monk, either, now that Kentucky’s out. Oregon’s high-powered offense took away our opportunity to see Josh Jackson and Kansas on this stage, too. Jayson Tatum has been twiddling his thumbs at home for two weeks, since Duke’s shocking loss to South Carolina. Washington’s Markelle Fultz didn’t even go dancing at all.
No, there are no one-and-done superstars here at a most unexpected Final Four. This stage will not be graced by any of the likely top-five NBA draft picks. Instead, we’ll have four teams – North Carolina, Gonzaga, Oregon and South Carolina – that are led by upperclassmen. Some are veterans of the NCAA Tournament, some aren’t. But they’re all old for a sport which tends to skew young.
“It’s like that every year; I really think so,” said Gamecocks head coach Frank Martin, whose core is a senior class that has never gone dancing before this year. “Everyone falls in love with the one-and-done phenomenon. I get it. I’ve coached them too. I’m lucky that I started my career with two of them. It’s part of what we do. But there’s a big difference between 18year-olds and 22-year-olds. I know there was with me. I know as a high school teacher when they left my classroom at 18 and they came back two years later to say hello they’re a completely different human being. I know as a college coach, the conversations I have with my seniors are completely different than the conversations I had with the same guy when they were freshmen. There’s a maturity factor.
“The older we get, the less we give in to the emotion of a moment and the more we stay focused in on what matters, which is the moment that we’re in, so we can act the right way and perform and think the right way. And I think that’s why the older teams usually figure out a way to make it to this stage, in this moment.”
Martin’s theory – backed up by this year’s foursome, plus last year’s title game matchup of Villanova and North Carolina which featured zero one-anddones – makes a great deal of sense. Even in a single-elimination tournament, the idea that it’s about the best team and not necessarily the most talented individual players is appealing.
“The easy answer would be that more experience handles tournament play better – but I think it was only three years ago when Duke won it with (two) or four freshmen starters,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. “But I just think that there are so many really good players, so many really good teams that you want to be playing your best right at the end of the year, and then you have a chance.
“I think that older guys understand how fleeting it is, and how sudden the season is over with, and perhaps they focus a little bit more on that part of it.”
That can be a slight edge, and perhaps it’s more of an edge in a year like this than others. But it’s also rewarding for a coach such as Williams to see a player like Justin Jackson, a junior, grow into the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year-caliber star with a veteran supporting cast set on finishing what it fell short of a year ago in the national title game. Or for Martin to watch Sindarius Thornwell do so much in so many ways to carry South Carolina to its first Final Four.
Maybe those names aren’t as big as those of the freshman you’ve spent all season hearing about, or the guys that NBA fans are impatiently waiting to see in their league.
But even if the sport’s flashiest players aren’t here, the best teams seem to be.